Framing Statement
Our piece was entitled ‘Mapping the Lost City’. It took place in the gardens of Lincoln’s ‘The Usher gallery’ museum on Saturday the 10th May 2014 from 10am lasting until 4pm.
The process of viewing our piece intended to take place as follows; Participants can sign up in reception to allocate a time to which they want to take our tour. One of us would be acting as the curator of our piece, available to ask questions about the piece and supplying participants with headphones and MP3 players which include our ‘audio tour’. They would then be free to walk around our collection of lost and abandoned objects that we found around Lincoln that we will have repurposed as art and placed around the museum’s gardens. Whilst they were doing this they would be listening to our audio tour which contains soundscapes of our journey through Lincoln and passages we have selected from Paul Auster’s The City of Glass.
The idea of the sounds of Lincoln being played is an attempt to recreate an element of the Auster text. We walked through Lincoln and recorded our journey. This journey was carefully orchestrated to write out the word ‘TIME’ through the directions we walked.Also there is another mapping element to our piece participants will be given a map and a mapping key to walk around with; this key would be marked, in four categories, cyborg particles, protectors, adult’s forbidden and familiar findings. Visitors would mark these by using the correct colour pen, determining for themselves which items fit into what category.
Whilst this is going on, the other members of our group would be performing as part of the collection. For instance one of us was hugging an elephant teddy bear, amongst our childhood collection, whilst another is stood at the end of the tour in wedding dress throwing confetti. Our choice of using the outside space of the museum highlights the idea that we are presenting an ‘anti gallery’. This meaning, we want to call into question: what is seen as art and why? Not only will we be showcasing pieces that wouldn’t be traditionally called art but also we will call into question how it is framed.
First impressions
My first chance to experience the museum for myself was not what I expected. On first impressions what struck me the most was not any of the artefacts in the collection, but the space itself. Walking around and experiencing the museum got me thinking of the purpose and framework of a museum. What stood out the most was the sounds that followed me around the museum, particularly the (what seemed to be) extremely loud footsteps and creaks of the passers-by. Obviously this is to be expected of a museum. Yet I thought; whereas you would consider a museum, perhaps like a library, to be strictly quiet, these noises seemed contradicting that purpose. It made me wonder if this is a problem for spectators or if it is expected as part of ‘a museums’ framework.
How to conduct yourself in a museum
later on when I vested the museum the next time, I decided to ask the museum staff if anybody had been removed from the museum for being too loud. They told me that they hadn’t and that it would only be an issue if the noise being made would border on anti social behaviour. This struck me to think if it’s possible to be loud in a museum and not have the behaviour become anti social.
When I enquired the museum staff about having any rules about noise they responded by saying ‘no’ and ‘this is not like a library’. I found this to be contrary to my previous thoughts that a museum should be quiet in order to absorb and interpret the art before you. I believe that if a museum was indeed loud, it would become chaotic and hard to focus and change the way we interpret the art. In the reading this week it was pointed out that “Traditionally, of course, museums arranged their collections in predictable, linear narratives; committed to organizational categories intended to be definitive” (Bennet, p.4, 2013) I Believe that by being chaotic, a museum would lose its organisation and become unpredictable to what we perceive the atmosphere of a museum to be, creating an unexpected social ambiance.
How the artefacts in the museum were laid out, struck me to consider it as a performance in its self, The way they were presented, by being put beneath glass, labelled and arranged for optimum viewing seemed to become an art form in its own right. It leads me to think, that in some way, the way we view to artefacts is a type of performance of its own. As it is put forward in Theatre & Museums (2013), “Today’s museum is a ‘theatre, a memory palace, a stage for the enactment of the other times and places, a space of transport, fantasy and dreams’” (Bennet, p.4, 2013). Depending on how we view the art leads us to interpret it in a different way all together. For instance, remembering back to the lesson before we were told that some room were dark than others as some of painting require to be lit specifically. It, although not intending to, created a different atmosphere, causing the objects displayed to stick out in my mind more than the others
Social atmosphere
In order to develop my idea of wanting to play with the ‘social atmosphere’ of a museum, I did some reading to inspire me for an idea. I mulled over a couple of ideas but I found it hard thinking of anything specific. In Social Works Performing art, supporting publics by Shannon Jackson, she explains “the trick would be to place social systems in the foreground of analysis despite the fact that they usually occupy the background of experience” (Jackson, 2011, p.6). This approach would mean that I would need to take a theme or some sort of signifier of something you would usually expect to find in a museum and place it boldly in the middle of the gallery. But at the same time I needed to think of a theme that had some relation to the site.
When I met with my group other ideas were formed. in the end we went with one that came from somebody else in the group. Born from another member of the group, we decided to focus upon the purpose of ‘housing art’ a way we would present this would to use the stigma surrounding the homeless to make people question why art is housed. Also as we were taking place in the gallery we wanted to use homeless people’s belongings or objects people would identify with homelessness and present them as part of the collection. We wanted to question if “Art is garbage…” or if “…garbage could be art” (Edelstein, 2007)
Yet still with this idea I believed that the notion of having homeless people and homeless aesthetics within the museum, a place you wouldn’t expect to find them challenged the social experience of the museum. It would cause people to conduct themselves in a way that would usually in a museum. We came up with a few ideas in which we could to achieve this. For instance we wanted to create a pop up soup kitchen outside the museum inviting people into the museum and our ‘exhibit’. The thought behind this was to, firstly, introduce and convey our use of the homeless atheistic. As we served our visitors soup, we would invite them in and speaking to them as if we were treating as if they were part of the homeless community. As we served them hot soup it would also play the idea of ‘taking care of them’ by serving them with something warm and sheltering them, using the museum.
Textual ideas
Evolving from the core of our previous idea, we were drawn back to the quote we used question if garbage could be art and we took the idea of the instillation and choose to develop it in a much broader way so we could question how art could be viewed. This idea is inspired by text we found in Paul Auster’s The New York trilogy, in the story, City of glass, it asks “What happens when a thing no longer performs it function? Is it still a thing, or has it become something else?” (Auster, 1999, p.77) this prompted us to question if objects can still retain their function after it is no longer able to perform it. And if not what use could we adopt to them.
Later in the story, when the writer asks Sitllman about his work and what he does he replies;
“‘…from the chipped to the smashed from the dented to the squashed, from the pulverized to the putrid.’
‘What do you do with these things?’
‘I give them names.’
‘Names?’
‘ I invent new words that will correspond to the things’” (Auster, 1999, p.78)
We felt that this gave a another dimension to our idea of instillation. If we took broken and abandoned items we found in Lincoln and gave them a new story to what you would previously have thought they would have been used for. We would be able to make people see them in a new light. We want to as Nick Kaye describes it present, “Performance provided a means through which the geography and events of ‘found sites could be approached outside the representational terms of painting and sculpture.” (Kaye, 2000, p.105)
What to do with Art
eventually we managed to finalise the name of our piece, ‘Mapping the lost city of Lincoln’, this is because ultimately we want our piece to be guide around Lincoln where we highlight the hidden treasures that we have found.
The basic idea is to turn the gardens of the museum into a walk way through Lincoln. Here will be placing the lost artefacts we have found around Lincoln and present them in a way where they become ‘art.’ We will do this by framing them as such; buy either placing them on plinths or framing them and giving them explanatory panels. For instance, The idea of one piece comes from a collection of records we found. The covers of these records feature a repeated image of singer Mario Lanza. With this we want to frame them and arrange them in a style that is similar to a pop-art piece we saw in the museum. This piece uses a repeated image of Marylyn Monroe made famous by Andy Warhol.
- (Warhol, undated, citedin bbc.co.uk, 2011)
Nick Kaye’s Site-specific art speaks of Wolf Vostell’s ‘dé-coll/age happening’ here, “Collages from the street and torn posters, were presented in ways informed by abstract expressionist and tachiste painting” (Kaye, 2000, p.115). Our piece aspires to do a similar thing, by replicating something the audience member might have already seen, or will about to see (depending on whether they are entering or leaving the museum) we hope to make them question the pop-art inside. We are replicating the actual piece inside, but taking away the very image is displays. Therefore our piece becomes a type of what we call anti pop-art.
In a piece called Soap, artist Allan Kaprow presented the participants with a variety of instructions that were dispersed across a New York City and, simultaneously, a farm located in New Jersey. These instructions played through out the day and are alternative to each other for example, one instruction was:
“1st morning: clothes
dirtied by urination
1st evening: clothes washed
(in the sea) (in the Laundromat)” (Kaye, 2000, p.109)
These type of instruction were set to be performed in isolation away from other pepole’s instructions yet these instructions were aimed to happen in relation to each other and it was up to the participant if both or one or any at all were followed through. Nick Kaye suggests that, “Kaprow draws the participant into a network of related and often thematically linked activities yet disperses these activities in order to call its formal frame as a work into question” (Kaye, 2000 p.110). What this reminded me of straight away was the audio tours you can purchase at some. If we feed the participants a variety of instructions that involve how to view specific pieces and in what order to view them, it would aid us in creating a specific mapping experience, by guiding them around Lincoln in what way we wanted. Also it would throw participants into reflecting how they view museums and how museums are traditionally viewed. Ultimately we want to create a type of anti gallery.
Inspirations from the tech
When it came to our tech rehearsal we did not yet have every aspect of what we would need on the final day finalised, however we got our chance to place and to see what some of our ideas would look like on the day of the actual performance. This was our first chance to be in the space with some of our objects. Before this we had only ever been able to sketch out what we wanted our pieces to look like. Today created an opportunity to see what the placing of certain pieces would look like and how placing certain pieces would work in actual fact. For instance one idea we had was to gather some of the large technical objects we found and wrap them up in ribbons and bows as if they are being presented as new for the first time. However when we started to place things down we came up with the idea of parading these objects within the tall grass. We felt that this created many strong and immediate contrasts, both ascetically and meaningfully. Seeing Broken and dilapidated Technology amongst ever growing natural grass created ideas of dying and living, something I believe art to do.
How to perform outside
Just before the performance day I managed to finalize my performance element in the piece; I will be dressed in a second weeing dress, hugging a tree at the end of the tour. This is done mainly as a response to the first wedding dress seen in the tour. The first one is sprawled across the bench as if there is meant to be somebody in it. The image of this symbol of love being abandoned should highlight a lack of contact, life, warmth, hopefulness and love. So I hope to contrast this by bringing life to the second wedding dress. The hugging of the tree will show contact, love, warmth and hopefulness to aid in my contrasting of the first one. However my interacting element still needed some work. I wasn’t too sure how to act with them. However after hearing the comments from Ally I thought I would be a good idea to invite participant to hug the tree with me, this element of interaction would further contrast the first wedding dress, this adds to our idea of an ‘anti gallery’.
Evaluation
I felt that our piece, ultimately went well. Most people seemed to want to engage with me, I was a bit tongue tied about what to say at some points, for instance when people asked what the point of me being in a wedding dress was I ended up repeating the same answer a few times. They didn’t seem to get my explanation. If I were to do it again I think I would need to think of a clearer way to convey it.
We managed to set everything up within two hours, which is how long we expected it to take. During the setting up, a couple more ideas for pieces came to me that I hadn’t thought of before. For instance, I had an idea to wrap the banister up in VHS tape, I felt it was very effective and created a strong image. This shows how, with our piece, it feels like you have to let the space tell you how to present things rather than planning how to present them ahead of time. Something I felt that through the process, this is something we focused too much on and worried to much about ahead of time, ultimately it was not needed.
I felt this was furthered on Saturday when people kept coming up to me during my performance and conjuring up ideas of their own of what some pieces meant. We found at the end of it we didn’t need to worry much about putting meaning behind everything as people will find their own meaning behind it.
On the Thursday we worried that we would not be able to accommodate the numbers of people attending with a substantial amount of MP3 play. An Idea was put forward that we create a QR code and invite people to scan this, taking them to an uploaded version of our audio. With this though it would mean that we needed to create a QR code, something none of us had done before. Thankfully this was a very quick process and we managed to get everything done in time for Saturday. The addition of the QR code was easy and straight forward for participants to use. This was very effective and worked very well. If we were to do this again, this would be a feature we would want to incorporate from the start, maybe even sending the code out earlier so participant can get in ready before they come, making it easier for them.
Throughout both days we did have some unfortunate and miserable weather. But the weather did in the end cause some problems that we didn’t really anticipate. Firstly to combat the rain we offered the participants umbrellas to carry around with them. However this gave the audience to much to hold along with the maps, and it became a complicated task for them to balance holding the umbrella map, pen and their audio devise so maybe there should have been more troubleshooting with how the audience could map out the objects. In our feed back this was brought up. The entire mapping element came across as too much and drew focus to too many places. I feel that if we were to do this again we would need some careful consideration to how to make this simpler or scrap it all together.
Works cited
Kaye, N. (2000) Site-specific art. USA: Routledge
Auster, P. (1999) The New York Trilogy. London: Faber and Faber.
Jackson, S. (2011) Social Works performing art, supporting publics. New York: Routledge
Bennett, S. (2013) Theatre & Museums. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
BBC (2011) Modern Masters exhibition opens in Lincoln’s Usher Gallery[online] London: BBC. Availble from http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/72218000/jpg/_72218160_f43cb71e-d2ac-4df5-b261-0df32d67bc27.jpg [Accessed 29 May 2014]